Digital cameras have become relatively ubiquitous. For example, many mobile telephones are equipped with digital cameras that allow users thereof to capture relatively high resolution images. Additionally, many mobile telephones are equipped with a relatively large amount of computer-readable data storage, such that hundreds or even thousands of digital images can be retained on the mobile telephone. A user of a mobile telephone can transfer selected images thereon to a social network application, to another computing device of the user, etc. Typically, people carry their mobile telephones with them, thereby causing a greater number of images to be captured by people when compared to the number of images captured by people a relatively short time ago. Moreover, using digital cameras, there is no cost to a user when capturing images. A combination of the above has caused personal image collections of users to become quite large. Other issues include the fact that oftentimes images of users are spread across numerous systems, such as personal computers at one's home, external storage drives (e.g., USB drives), cloud storage services, and on social network sites. Despite the increasing ubiquity of digital cameras and phones that are configured to relatively easily upload images to social networks, users often retain a large volume of images in a personal collection in order to keep their collection private.
Oftentimes, a device employed to capture an image will automatically assign metadata to such image. For example, a mobile telephone equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver can assign metadata to an image that indicates a time that the image was captured and a location where the image was captured. Images may then be indexed in the personal image collection of the user based upon metadata assigned thereto. It has been found, however, that timestamps assigned to images from devices utilized to capture such images can be unreliable (e.g. a clock may not be set correctly), and is often not helpful to the user with respect to organizing images. For instance, a user may have difficulty in remembering what year a particular event captured in an image took place, much less which month, week, or specific day. Still further, if the personal image collection includes scanned images (or transferred images), the timestamp assigned thereto may be the date that scanning was performed (or transferred), and not a date relevant to an event captured in an image.
Computer-executable applications have been developed that assist users in connection with applying other metadata to images in personal image collections. These applications, however, typically require a significant amount of manual input from users thereof. That is, a user must manually visually categorize faces, and subsequently manually apply metadata thereto (e.g., the user may indicate that an image includes a particular person or is relevant to a certain event). Images in the personal image collection of the user may then be indexed as a function of metadata assigned by way of the application. Again, the relevance of the index depends on the quality of the metadata, which can require a relatively large amount of manual input from the user.